


Anymore

by Polly_Lynn



Series: The "Unnamed" Series [5]
Category: Castle
Genre: Angry Sex, Angst, F/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-05
Updated: 2015-06-05
Packaged: 2018-04-03 01:31:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4081348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Polly_Lynn/pseuds/Polly_Lynn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Summary: "Wounded. He called her that once, and he had no idea. He does now. He sees it behind her wide open eyes and knows he's responsible for it. And that might just be worse than exile. He's wounded her, and she doesn't even hate him. She just doesn't care."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Anymore

**Author's Note:**

> This is set during Deep in Death (2 x 01). It's chronologically fifth in the "Unnamed" series, but I wrote it eighth.

 

* * *

 

He's tried everything. For going on three months, he's  _tried._ He's called nonstop and then at intervals. Messages and no messages until he'd backed off that entirely.

He's tried indirect contact. Emails and handwritten notes. Flowers and chocolates and gifts of all kinds, big and little. Intimate and thoughtful with sparse, sincere words on tasteful notecards. Grandiose and over the top with no words at all, because who else could possibly have sent it?

He really has tried everything short of this . . . invasion. This one thing he's sure that  _she's_ sure is him pulling another stunt. Bullying his way back in, but he  _didn't._ He wasn't lying. It wasn't his idea.

It's useful, he supposes, even if he hates everything about it. The two halves of his life colliding, and the one he's left with—the one she  _hasn't_ cut him out of—all slick and shallow and empty. It's informative, anyway. Because at least he knows why now.

Why she hasn't picked up the phone even once. Why the only thing even resembling a response he's gotten in three months is every single gift—big and small, silly and serious—returned unopened.

At least he knows. He sees it in the way her gaze skips over him entirely. And just in case he doesn't know—just in case he hasn't gotten the message—she tells him outright.

_You don't have to explain yourself._

_I don't?_

_No. See, I don't care anymore._

It's the "anymore" that's the worst of it. A slip of the tongue that makes her eyes open wide and the truth he sees there is terrible.  _Anymore._ Because she did care, once upon a time. In her achingly cautious way—in his, though he's only just seeing that now—they'd stumbled into a halting kind of closeness.

Somehow he'd slipped through every painstaking defense she'd put up in the last decade. And she'd pushed right past barriers that had grown so high so gradually, he hadn't even known they were there.

With her eyes open wide, just for an instant, he sees all that. Not just her anger, though there's more than enough of that to go around. Fury and  _how dare you_  and he wants to push back against that. He wants badly to make his case. To make her hear what he meant and didn't mean. How it happened. He might if it were just anger flashing dark. If she just hated him, he might. But it's worse than that.

_Wounded._

He called her that once, and he had no idea. He does now. He sees it behind her wide open eyes and knows he's responsible for it. And that might just be worse than exile. He's wounded her, and she doesn't even hate him. She just doesn't care.

Not anymore.

* * *

 

He'd like to make something of how eager she is to be rid of him. He'd like to think it means she has her guard up. That she  _needs_ her guard up, but even palming him off on Lanie is more about ditching Amy. He's just a two for one, and after that, Montgomery is the only reason he's still in this at all.

He'd like to think her calling the loft—rushing to reassure his family—means something. He plays it up for his mother. For Alexis, but it's really just about them anyway. It's really just empathy, because she knows what it's like to wait like that. To laugh off the first fifteen minutes. The first thirty until it's two hours and a plainclothes cop at the door.

He'd like to be angry about the whole thing, because she won't even  _listen,_ and he is. If he concentrates hard enough, the fury rises to the top of it all and he's every bit as angry as she is. He's spent three months trying to apologize. Trying to explain how it unfolded. Trying to make amends, and he's livid at how easy this is for her. How everything in her world works just fine without him.

_I will make you change your mind._

_I won't._

He doesn't want to believe her. He doesn't even want to hear it. How flat and cool her voice is. How flat and cool every single thing about her is.

But he does hear her. He knows in every cell of his body that she means it. He knows it's already long lost. This impossible thing between them, over before he'd even realized there was anything to lose.

* * *

 

It's happening before he knows it. Blind fury and this  _stupid_ thing he's lying to himself about.

_Tell me the plan again._

_I go in, find the tattooed Russian, I get a clear picture of him, then I get the hell out of there._

_And you don't stay any longer then you need to._

He flashes her a wicked smile. Lying to her now, too, and she has to know it. She has to, but he shoves the thought away. If he stops moving, it'll be a disaster. He'll have to  _think._

If he stops moving, the fury will sink and that terrible, queasy feeling will claw its way up. Hurt and upset, because she doesn't even hate him. Regret and misery and the bald truth that this is  _stupid_ and absolutely pointless _._ A grand fucking gesture when she doesn't care. Not anymore.

He doesn't stop moving.

* * *

 

Something catches fire in him. He hits the stairway and runs the gauntlet of bouncers, solid walls of menace, and it's like he's visiting all the old familiar places. He is. He does. He settles back into a version of himself before her, and it's easier then. Easier to swallow the lie about what this is. What he's doing and why.

He'd forgotten this. The exhilaration of real life. This kind of world, filthy and alive and pulsing with greed and desperation. Cold calculation and rage. He'd almost forgotten what it was like to follow his own worst instincts and trust luck and swagger to carry the day. He'd almost forgotten, and it's like a drug hitting his system now.

He bellies up to the no-limits table and flashes his roll of cash. Smiles to himself when he thinks of her watching back in the surveillance van, seething, because she's hated the idea from the start. That he might have something to offer. That she might need him. She absolutely hates the very thought, and she must be  _losing_ it to think about him bringing this one home. The perfect epilogue for the  _Cosmo_ piece.

He jolts back to himself courtesy of something guttural and unintelligible directed his way. Something definitely menacing from the guy in the vest. They're dealing him in, and he needs to settle. Focus on the game.

He does. He pushes every thought of her to the far edges of his mind. He peels up the corner of his cards. He makes smalltalk, and the story comes so easily it feels like truth. It feels like something that might as well be truth, because  _this_  is the world he belongs to. This is how it's been since long before her.

He throws himself into the game. At this table. At every table in the smoke-filled card room and every hollow place like it.

He tells himself it has nothing to do with her.

* * *

 

It has everything to do with her. That's painfully,  _miserably_ clear when she hustles him into a way-back corner of the kitchen, her hands on him, and far too much of her skin bared. Far too much of _her_ close enough to breathe in.

"Stay. Here." She spits the words at him. She jerks the sweater closed over her chest and tugs pointlessly at a hem that crawls right back up her thigh.

"Where . . . " He tries desperately to keep his eyes high, but it's no easy task with an eidetic memory of every detail of that hot pink lace and a burning desire to know what exactly he might see if the ribbed edge of that sweater would only slip just a little higher. A  _very_  little higher, because it's a fucking  _sweater_ and she stripped down and marched in here like  _that_  to save him. It's no easy task when all he can think of is what the soft skin of her shoulder feels like under his lips. What it's like to kiss her slowly when she's too far gone to keep things fierce and hard and driving. "Where are you going?"

"To head off the guys from organized crime who'll be swarming this place in about three minutes." She claws fingers through her hair, trying to settle it back down. It's not helping at all. It's doing the very opposite of helping. " _And_ then I guess I'll be fending off the special Chinatown task force. And trying to coordinate with the human trafficking unit. Oh, and narcotics. They'll want this one, and who knows who else?"

"Like that?" One hand gestures. He grabs at it with the other, but it's too late. "You're going to talk to . . . all those people . . . like  _that?"_

"Yes, Castle," she hisses. "Like  _this."_

"Your clothes," he stammers, "the rest of your clothes . . ."

"Are back in the van." She jerks a thumb over her shoulder. "Which, by now, is something like a ten-minute walk through a sea of reporters and looky-loos with youtube accounts. Because you wouldn't stick to the plan. Because you just won't fucking  _listen_."

"Worked out, didn't it?" He tries a smile. He's going for flat, but it comes out just this side of nasty. Fury and misery at war inside him and something even uglier comes out on top. He goes cold. "Didn't just get your man. Big bust like this. Good for you, right?"

He has it in hand by the end. A slick, self-satisfied version of himself, but it's like she's flipped a switch. Cold. Flat. Furious. They're just words to him. She's the living embodiment. A sudden, brutal reminder that she doesn't even hate him

"Yeah, Castle, all this?" She gestures to him. To herself. "This'll be  _great_  for me."

* * *

 

The fury goes the absolute second she walks away. Misery wins for good. He feels like an utter shit, and there's no way he can just sit here. They're done. She doesn't even hate him, but he can't just leave her to that. Cat calls and her name in that slick, awful undertone.

The house is easy. He fiddles with the button camera enough for it to be obvious to anyone giving him the side-eye. He drops Ryan's name. Esposito's, if he needs to, but the fact is he doesn't. He's too white, too well-dressed, and too obviously not with any particular group in what's turing out to be a fucking Benetton ad for organized crime for anyone to be interested in him.

It's harder out the door. A lot of the press know him, and the very last thing he wants right now is a crowd. He has an idea, though. Stupid, but it works more often than not. He cranes up on his toes from the bottom step like he's looking to the way back. He tosses off some comment about  _Amy_ and _her exclusive._

It only buys him a minute. The knot turns in on itself. The murmur swells to a roar as bright screens and mics and a handful of cameras are lofted high and angled down toward the back, in search of someone who's not even there. It only creates the smallest of holes, but it's all he ducks his head and disappears, well into the hulking shadow of delivery trucks and panel vans before they sort it out and think to come after him.

It takes him a while—too long—to find the one he's looking for. White and nondescript, but not that one or that one or that one. It's locked when he finds it. Of course it's locked, but he jams his elbow through the passenger-side vent window, not even thinking now as he feels a shard slice open his sleeve and reach skin. Moving. Just moving. Gathering up pants and dark shirt and socks and only just hearing it, barely registering the sound before he turns away in the act of slamming the door. The  _clink_  of something solid hitting the corrugated floor and a sinuous, metallic slide toward him.

The ring. He lifts it with shaking fingers. A tide of misery lapping at his collar bones. His jaw and the roof of his mouth. Her mother's ring.

* * *

 

He finds another way back in. Reckless again, but he needs to keep moving, and he can't risk it. Camera flash and things shoved in his face. He really can't risk it, so he climbs a rusted set of metal stairs to a wide ledge and a back door high up. Hopes in a distant way that he doesn't run into any trigger-happy uniforms working the exits.

His luck holds out. A hard shoulder to the door and it pops open. It's dark. Disorienting, but he recognizes the high-ceiling sound of the kitchen nearby. Voices slapping into the stainless steel and ringing out.

His eyes adjust. There's alley light filtering in from a couple of high-up transoms. Something a little brighter from another in an interior wall. Above a door he realizes and sets out for it.

It opens in. It ought to, but there's some strange resistance at first when he tries to turn the handle. It's not locked, just some kind of weight on it.

 _Her_ weight. He realizes, after the fact. After she's stumbled through and landed half in his arms . After she's shoved him away.

"Castle, where the  _hell_ did you go?"

She's . . . incensed. Every inch of her tight and furious, and the words so rapid fire and strangled he can hardly follow. About the place not being clear. About a uniform shot through the shoulder because he'd wandered alone through the wrong door and found yet another Russian hunkering down.

It's a reaction at last. Some dark, unpleasant corner of his mind registers that. At least she's angry. At least it's something, but the flicker of satisfaction, if that's even what it is, dies immediately. Suffocates under the weight of misery.

"I brought your clothes." He talks over her. Quiet. Not even close to competing, but it stops her. Pauses her at least, as he holds out the careful bundle at arm's length. As he keeps as carefully away from her as she's been keeping away from him. "I'll go . . . back. I'll wait."

He steps past her, a little surprised that his legs work. That his body will move at all. He's at the end of this. They're at the end of this, and he's exhausted. Almost too tired to be miserable. Almost.

She's silent. Shrunk back against the wall with the clothes clutched to her body like a shield. She's wide-eyed, and he's glad—somewhere far off, he's glad—the light is too dim to see much of anything.

His hand is on the door when he remembers. He turns back, digging in his pocket, as careful as his clumsy, tired fingers will let him be. He raises his palm with the ring resting in it, the chain spilling between his fingers and just catching the dusty light from overhead.

"This, too. I brought it." He struggles with the words. He's  _so_ tired. "I broke a window." He lifts his other arm, ragged sleeve fluttering. He registers the burn of an open wound. Wet fabric pulling. "The van. I didn't want to just leave . . ."

She's there, then. Across the room in strides so quick he misses them. She's snatching at the chain and it tangles. Their fingers tangle, and he's afraid it'll break.

"Beckett?"

He means it as a warning, but it's a question by then. Her fingers are like iron around his, delicate links cutting into his skin and hers. She has his shirt in her other fist and the dim light doesn't matter now. He sees everything.

"Why," she chokes out. "Why couldn't you just . . ."

"I didn't mean . . ."

She slams him back into the door, all contradictions. She's cruel with her teeth, avoiding his lips after a single, brutal kiss. Scraping at his jaw and closing hard around the skin under his ear, even as one hand, with infinite care, eases the chain from from their tangled fingers and slips it back into his front pocket.

Her palm rests there, just over his hip, her fingers curling toward the crease of his thigh, in a gesture of safekeeping. It hardly lasts for three beats of his pounding heart, that soft,  _sorrowful_  moment, but it's enough to galvanize him. To spark a kind of desperate hope and bring his arms around her. He slides his hands down her spine, hungry for the feel of her. He holds her to him.

"I didn't. I  _didn't."_ He opens his mouth against her shoulder. Against the already bare expanse of skin as the sweater slides wide and slips to catch at her elbows. It pours out of him. Everything he's said a hundred times that she wouldn't hear. It  _wants_ to pour out of him at last, but the same two words come over and over. "I didn't"

Even that's too much for her. She covers his mouth with hers. Punishment, not reward, as she claws at buttons and slams the heel of her hand against the bruises already rising where the Russian slammed him into the prep table.

"I don't care." The words are raw, a terrible effort that barely makes it past her lips as she tugs savagely at his belt. "I don't  _care_ anymore."

It's a lie. He catches her mouth in a stolen, unguarded kiss and tastes it. Knows it. A  _lie._

"Kate." He glides his palms up her ribs, a heavy claiming weight giving way to fingers feathering at the hollows behind each hip. It sends her head arching back like he knows it will. Like it does every time. It bares her throat to his mouth and slows her. "Kate, please."

"No." She pushes at him. Pushes away. It's a mistake. Her name or the plea or both. "Just  _stop_."

_Stop._

It's not even a whisper. Nothing he could have even heard if their bodies hadn't been pressed together just now, but the word jolts him back, his arms spread wide in horror. He's stammering. Confessing. Apologizing and crying out when she closes her fists in his hair and pulls him savagely to her.

" _Stop_ ," she says again, her eyes closing and her breath hot on his skin. "Just. Stop. Talking." She pushes at him. Pulls at the same time, carrying him with her until she's pressed into the corner, his body tight and flush behind hers. "Stop, Castle."

It's a plea of her own, now. A paradox as she drags his hands to her breasts, letting out a cry of strangled satisfaction when he gives in. When he pinches and tugs and shoves the hot pink lace roughly aside to soothe and tease and torment.

"I will." He dusts the vow over the nape of her neck. Mindless, senseless surrender to something he knows is terrible. "I will."

He grinds his hips into hers. Groans at the heat as he splays one hand wide between her breasts, the other a shadow coasting down. Exploring the narrow margin of lace. Tracing the span from hip to hip and sliding finally underneath to touch her.

She arches against him, gasping and urgent, though his fingers move slowly enough to be practically still. "Now." She turns her head. Finds his mouth with her own. The corner of his lip with her teeth. "Now, now,  _now, Castle."_

Her fingers fly free of his as he stoops, dragging his body along hers as he tugs lace over her hips and down her thighs.

"Pink."

He thinks he's said it to himself. Kept it inside, along with every thing else, but she chokes out a laugh that's too close to a sob.

"Pink." Another laugh. More practiced and hollow. "Fucking  _matching."_ He wants to laugh, too. He wants there to be some softness between them, but it's savage. It's fierce and angry and  _wounded_ as her fingers climb the wall and splay high above her head. "God, Castle. Now.  _Now._ "

"Now." He fumbles, his wallet dropping to the floor with a sharp report that startles her. Makes her jerk against him, almost painful, just as he's sliding home. Trying to, but she's tight.

"Now," he breathes again, slowing. Pressing his thumbs hard into the familiar flare of her hips. Bringing her back to his pace, because she's  _tight_ and there's something suffocating and miserable rising in his chest as he wonders. As he imagines each of them, alone and wanting. Three months. A fucked-up kind of faithfulness to this thing that isn't.

"Now," he whispers one last time. His teeth catching her skin as her body erupts. As she's his and he's hers  in that single moment and it overwhelms them both.

* * *

 

He's quiet. Honors the vow as he stoops for his wallet. For the trail of things she's left along the way as she reaches for the wide belt at her feet. For the unsalvageable wreck of hot pink lace.

He folds her pants in half along the creases. In half again. Repeats the procedure on her shirt and balls her socks together in a pair. Pointless gestures, but moving.  _Moving._

He holds the neat pile out to her. Arm's length again and his eyes skittering to the side. "I'll . . . let you change." He gestures to the door. Far beyond to the kitchen. Quieter now. Everything is quieter. "I'll go wait."

He nudges the clothes toward her again. Toward the limp, half-hearted hands that aren't even meeting him halfway. She shakes herself. Reaches for them and nods, stepping aside. Letting him go.

"Castle."

His fingers are wrapped around the handle by the time she says his name. It sounds like a third or fourth try and he remembers, then.

"Oh." He digs in his pocket with fingers that are shaking still. "Oh." He holds out the ring and her palm comes up to take it. A reflex, though, like she'd almost forgotten. Like she  _could_ forget. He turns away again.

" _Castle._ " There's a hint of exasperation in it this time. A hint of something old that hurts under the circumstances.

"I know, Beckett," he says without turning. He'd just as soon spare himself. He'd just as soon she not be the one to say the words out loud.

"You know."

He almost turns at that. The curiosity. Unexpected softness.

"This . . ." He takes a shaky breath. Tries to steady himself for it, but his gaze drifts over his shoulder without his permission, and she's so beautiful. She's  _so_ beautiful and he misses her already. " . . . didn't happen. Doesn't change anything." His eyes slip closed. "I know."

"That's not . . ." She struggles with it. Works her jaw like it's as hard for her to make the words come as it is for him to stop his own. "Thank you. I was going to say thank you."

He nods, wordless. A favor in kind. He turns the handle at last and goes, as promised. He waits.

* * *

 

**Author's Note:**

> I thought I was done with this series when it got reported and pulled from ff.net, and maybe I should have stayed done, but anyway, this happened. Thanks for reading.


End file.
